Square Foot Garden while under construction

Well, dear readers, the garden has been built. As promised, there come the pictures so you can take the journey along with me. My wife and I got the idea for a Square Foot Garden from, shockingly, a book called Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. He’s a retired engineer who realized that single-row planting [...]

SFGCover SFGCover

Starting a Square Foot Garden

Last year my wife got the urge to start a garden. At first I was not entirely on-board with it. I was raised in the concrete world, not around agriculture, and had a hard time picturing myself digging around in the dirt. After doing a bit of the work, watching the plants grow, and picking [...]

Square Foot Garden Square Foot Garden

I am one of the 100 most read Yahoo! contributing writers on Earth!

It’s official. Badges just came out today. If you visit my profile there you can see it on the left side. It’s the new golden-colored one. I imagine some of my popular news commentaries were a big factor in earning this accolade. I had one in particular, in which I called Rick Santorum to carpet [...]

Drew Gets Top 100 Award! Drew Gets Top 100 Award!

Happy Holidays and and update. Just added a visitor’s globe widget.

And made a few other tweaks. Let me know what you think of the new globe on the sidebar, and the new Facebook followers box. Also, Happy Hollandaise and Seasoned Greetings. Winter is here, the Mayans were wrong, and we can all continue to write another day! Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season, a [...]

Snowflake7 Snowflake7

Web reading is a sprint

Don’t make the common mistake of thinking all writing is the same. Writing for print and writing for online reading have plenty in common. In both cases you should use proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and style. There’s one huge difference between the two that you ignore at your peril: Web content writing must be concise. [...]

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SFGCover

Square Foot Garden while under construction

May 19th, 2013 Andrew

Well, dear readers, the garden has been built. As promised, there come the pictures so you can take the journey along with me.

My wife and I got the idea for a Square Foot Garden from, shockingly, a book called Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. He’s a retired engineer who realized that single-row planting may work well on massive farms where you harvest with a combine, but they are wasteful in home gardening because they take up a lot of space and are inefficient. We wanted to build a useful, efficient and interesting garden, so we chose his method.

It involved a bit of wood, tools, and a little time, but if I can do it (a guy with no handyman skills whatsoever) I believe just about anyone could do it, too. Here’s how it came together, in pictures. (Click to enlarge for a better view).

 

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Square Foot Garden

Starting a Square Foot Garden

March 30th, 2013 Andrew

Last year my wife got the urge to start a garden. At first I was not entirely on-board with it. I was raised in the concrete world, not around agriculture, and had a hard time picturing myself digging around in the dirt. After doing a bit of the work, watching the plants grow, and picking a crop off them it became a lot more my thing. We were using kiddie pools as gardening beds, as our local soil is garbage, but this year we’re trying something different: Square Foot Gardening.

Basically it is a very different way of raising veggies than most folks are taught. It was designed by an engineer (go SCIENCE!) to be super efficient and work well in areas with awful soil. If all goes according to plan we will have three garden boxes similar to the one shown in the picture, raising a variety of fruit and veggies.

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Drew Gets Top 100 Award!

I am one of the 100 most read Yahoo! contributing writers on Earth!

February 13th, 2013 Andrew

It’s official. Badges just came out today.

If you visit my profile there you can see it on the left side. It’s the new golden-colored one.

I imagine some of my popular news commentaries were a big factor in earning this accolade.

I had one in particular, in which I called Rick Santorum to carpet for using his sick child as a political tool to get sympathy votes, that garnered over 211,000 views (along with over 2,000 comments, many of which were very nasty items from Santorum Supporters.)

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Snowflake7

Happy Holidays and and update. Just added a visitor’s globe widget.

December 24th, 2012 Andrew

And made a few other tweaks.

Let me know what you think of the new globe on the sidebar, and the new Facebook followers box.

Also, Happy Hollandaise and Seasoned Greetings. Winter is here, the Mayans were wrong, and we can all continue to write another day!

Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season, a happy and safe celebration on the 31st, and just general good things.

Sprint

Web reading is a sprint

July 28th, 2012 Andrew

Don’t make the common mistake of thinking all writing is the same.

Writing for print and writing for online reading have plenty in common. In both cases you should use proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and style. There’s one huge difference between the two that you ignore at your peril: Web content writing must be concise.

When writing for print publication the target audience consumes your material at a relaxed pace. They read in waiting rooms, in their homes, or in other situations in which time is not a major issue.

Web readers are different. They read at a sprint, not like they are running marathons.

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Ray Bradbury

RIP Ray Bradbury

June 6th, 2012 Andrew

Ray Bradbury died yesterday. His death marks the passing of a giant of the writing universe. It’s sad for me because Bradbury was an inspiration to me and one of my favorite authors when I was a kid. Hi books Farenheit 451 and story compilations like The Illustrated Man were staple books of my early years. His style and talent will be sorely missed.

Facebook icon

Social media takes time

May 29th, 2012 Andrew

If you own a small business, are an aspiring writer, or for any reason want to build your name and fame without breaking the bank then social media can provide the tools you need. There is a tradeoff, however. If you want to use social media as your fame-builder you’ll exchange high cost for high time investment. You will have to do all the work yourself.

That’s not to say tools don’t exist to simplify your life. They absolutely do. You’ll still have to set them up and learn to use them, and nothing can make your social media efforts work well for free.

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HomeOffice

How I doubled my writing output

May 29th, 2012 Andrew

When you want to be a writer one of the biggest challenges is making yourself actually do it. The fact of the matter is that we are what we do. If you spend your day writing you’re a writer. If you spend your time telling other people you’re a writer when you should be writing you’re not really a writer. The trick, of course, is getting yourself to do the work.

I recently doubled my writing output with just a few simple changes.

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Megaphone-red.jpg By Adamantios (Own work)[see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons

Getting People To View Your Content

May 25th, 2012 Andrew

You’ve written some content. You found an outlet. Your work was submitted, passed editorial muster, and got published. Great job! Now what? How do you get folks to see it? Gaining viewership is, in many ways, about shameless self-promotion as much as it is about content quality. Remember, the books on the top ten list at the New York Times are best selling, not best written, books.

That’s not to undervalue great content. I’ve said before that content is king and headlines are emperors, and it’s true. You need steak to back up the sizzle. It’s still the sizzle and scent that draws attention, though, as people don’t know how good your steak is till you’ve interested them enough to eat it.

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Pencil

Getting Started With Yahoo! Voices

May 24th, 2012 Andrew

If you like writing, have some talent for it, and want to get paid a little to do it, then Yahoo! Voices can be a great place for you to get your feet wet in the online writing world. It’s easy to get set up with, offers tremendous flexibility, and pays a fair amount for your work. Here’s how you get rolling with it.

Visit the Yahoo! Voices web site. You’ll need to create an account. That process is simple and quick, about like registering on any web site. Use your real name, or a professional pen name. Goofy names can keep you from getting published.

Log in and complete your profile. Upload a personal picture, preferably with a clear image of your face – looking happy. Add a biography that talks about what you want to write about, your expertise, and make it show your personality.

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